The British Board of Trade, in its report on French towns, says: “With regard to the wives’ earnings it may be observed that their importance is not limited to the towns in which textile industries predominate. In 51 per cent of all the families from which budgets were obtained the wives were contributors; the proportion was highest at Rome (a town largely dependent on the cotton trade,) where it was no less than 82 per cent.” Of Germany the report says, “A large proportion of the home workers are married women, who in this way seek to supplement the earnings of the chief bread-winner, and are only able to devote odd hours to the work. How largely the custom of home working is a result of poverty may be concluded from a statement made in a memorial lately addressed to the Berlin Tramway Company by its employees. The tramway employee is unfortunately unable to dispense with the earnings of his wife, even in normal domestic conditions, if he would maintain his family properly. The wife has really no choice in the matter. So, too, of 2,051 municipal employees interrogated on the subject in 1905. 416 or 20.2 per cent replied that their wives worked for money, 170 at charring, 161 as home workers, and 17 in factories, and 68 in other ways.”[48] In spite of their economic independence the status of the women among the working poor is lower than the status of the women of any other social class. They suffer more from oppression, and their position is little higher than that of the women of the Australia aborigines among whom man has the power of life and death over his wife and children. It is true, the state restricts the power of the husband over the wife and secures for her certain personal rights the Australian savages are ignorant of, but she has a new master in modern industry which virtually exercises over her a power of life and death untempered by sympathy and mutual interest. Degeneracy and elimination such as was never known in primitive society would result if the more fortunately situated economic classes did not interfere. FOOTNOTES: [35] Dawson, _German Life in Town and Country_, p. 50. [36] Cheyney, _Industrial and Social History of England_, p. 287. [37] Orne, Eliza, _Conditions of Women in the Nail, Chain and Bolt Making Industries_. [38] _Ibid_, p. 574. [39] Gohre, _Three Months in a Workshop_, p. 190. [40] _Charities and Commons_, Feb. 6, 1909, p. 916. [41] Rowntree, _Poverty, A Study of Town Life_, pp. 39, 54. [42] Cadbury, Edward; Matheson, M. Cecile; Shann, George. _Women’s Work and Wages._ [43] Booth, _Life and Labor of The People_, IV, p. 801. [44] Booth, _Labour and Life of the People_, IV, p. 295. [45] Webb, _Problems In Modern Industry_, p. 75. [46] Campbell, _Prisoners of Poverty_, pp. 30-1. [47] More, _Wage Earners’ Budgets_, pp. 83, 87. [48] _Cost of Living in French Towns_, 1909, p. XVI; _Cost of Living in German Towns_, 1908, p. 11. CHAPTER IV